Talking to yourself may be a sign that you’re clever, not crazy.

The study, published in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology was conducted by Gary Lupyan from the University of Wisconsin.

He says:

“It’s not an irrational thing to do,” and “You don’t know everything you’re going to say – you can even surprise yourself.”

Gary’s work includes a study in which he asked subjects to look for objects on a computer screen. Half of the test subjects were asked to speak the name of the object they were looking for out loud and half were told to remain silent, guess which half located the object faster?

Speaking words out loud physically activates the brain which makes it work faster and more efficiently.

“Saying a name out loud is a powerful retrieval cue,” and “Think of it as a pointer to a chunk of information in your mind. Hearing the name exaggerates what might normally happen if you just bring something to mind. Language boosts that process.”

Therapists have also backed up the theory that speaking out loud really helps. Former psychologist Anne Wilson Schaef says that she would get her clients to say out loud things that were troubling them, and after speaking the words, the anger would disappear.

Problems that occupy your mind are taking up physical space in there, speaking them lets them and frees up space in your brain for it to focus on better, more important things.